Cam the Man

Episode IX:

Exhausted from another epic recording session, Sphere and Benny are still too wound up to call it a night. Sphere skips around the studio with his sax, chanting nursery rhymes and prompting incoherent shouts of dismay from adult members of the Korean clan who live downstairs. Benny's Korean is admittedly rusty, but he's pretty sure he hasn't heard the words for "indie rock" or "turn it up." He throws his snifter of Johnnie blue against the wall and, as the glass shards firework onto the carpet, announces his intentions to paint the town red.

Neither Benny nor Sphere are entirely sure where the phrase "paint the town red" comes from, but best guesses are that the "red" refers either to the spilled blood on the wild frontier or to the color of lights in shady parts of Detroit. Alternatively, there may have been an 1880s American slang word "paint," meaning drink, as in, "I'm a-gonna paint me some of these here 40s." Likely this usage comes from the flushing of the face and nose (more noticeable among Koreans) that occurs with imbibing of drinks of an adult nature.

Ultimately the origins may have been irrelevant, since before you could read the last paragraph twice Sphere and Benny are chugging dark Mexican beer in a dark Michigan bar and meeting Iranians. One Iranian, specifically, named Cam ("as in camcorder") who opens, Kasparov-esque, by hailing Sphere as a fellow Iranian. Sphere vows that he is not, but rather half-Indian, half-Italian, which leads both he and Benny simultaneously to the same lame joke: perhaps they average out to somewhere near Iran. Cam thinks this hilarious and laughs high-pitched as if he is choking on helium.

Cam assures Benny and Sphere that, despite approaching them at a bar and laughing like a girl, he is not gay. To prove the point, he points out a nearby table of three girls and does the math. "Three of us and three of them- coincidence?" How could it be? Cam himself cannot approach these non-coincidental girls, however, because he says, he is not as attractive as Benny or Sphere. "You guys are the good-looking ones!" he fawns, before adding, "I'm not gay!"

When a female friend of Sphere's stops in to pick up a brush and help out with the painting, Cam is quick to offer the sage wisdom he has developed over his years in the statistics department. "Tell her you are 18 inches!" he proclaims, giggling and reaching out for Sphere's crotch. "You are so huge!" Then, recoiling, worried: "I'm not gay...." Later, after wandering off to have long, intimate conversations with the manliest woman in the room, Cam returns to ask if he can tell our heros something lewd. He does, and it is remarkably lewder than they expect. It is an amazingly misogynistic comment that does nothing to make Benny nor Sphere increase their estimation of Cam's desire to sleep with women.

Finally wound down, Benny and Sphere bid Cam farewell and begin the long hammering of lids onto the paint cans of frivolity, the washing of obstinate gin from the tattered brushes of another long evening. Tomorrow is another day, a day in which they will once again begin their treacherous ascent of Mt. Indie Rock armed only with their battered instruments, e-Bayed recording gear, and the advice of the mysterious Sherpa BK. Who knows what three-chord anthems lurk in the heart of men?

Fie Upon El Icicle

In its basic form, an icicle is a pendent, conical spike formed by the freezing of dripping water. Like with love or bitterness, each layer depends on the last one before it. Indeed, the process is a slow accrual that comes to a sharp point.

I see them everywhere, most commonly hanging off the sides of roofs, but also from trees, the bottoms of cars, utility poles and fences, on rocks near waterfalls or ground water seepage points. I even see them clinging to the bricks on walls.

Perhaps the reason I've noticed them this year is because the ones outside our new apartment are some of the biggest, heaviest, most jagged and ribbed icicles I'ver ever seen, or been close to. How satisfying it would be to reach out and knock them out single file at their thick bases! They'd be like a line of Dominos going down, falling down straight like divers and stabbing the snow, or else shattering into a hundred pieces. I've seen both happen. But I can't reach them from our porch. When I can, it's only one or two at a time.

It turns out they're much more complex than I or maybe you had known. There are pages and pages on them. They have roots, evenly-spaced ripples that form from the competition between gravity and surface tension. They have small bubbles inside them. As they grow, vertical ridges and horizontal rings form on their outer surface. They grow downward and outward at the same time, but at different rates. Some take their time.

Even after their phase of active growth has stopped, they continue to change shape and appearance, even at subfreezing temperatures. Some ice may sublime to the vapor state, thus smoothing out the surface.

How funny, I just overheard a conversation about the icicles outside this guy's window! Everyone's talking about them! Someone said, "Those are some pretty impressive icicles. They're turning into verifiable stalagtites." Like he was complimenting him on his shoes. "Hopefully I can get out of here pretty soon. Knock on an icicle." Hardy-har-har, da-da-ch.

Apparently they can reach yards in length. But most become unstable before then, usually during thaws, and crash to the ground below. As such, they are hazards. They can also pull down gutters and damage buildings.

If you're lucky to get through the winter without being impaled in the heart by an icicle, then off you go to spring, pretending like nothing's ever happened. Yeah, the sun shines again and the air warms. You may even dance. But do you forget about them? You don't. And you're not very much like them. You can't sublime. You may be able to change shapes, though most of the time it's not willfully. And can you really make it out there?

The truth is, they're beyond me. They've got me hooked, they've got me going away. Which is why I think I'm going to do them in once and for all. I'll just use a mop handle, and down they'll go. It'll be so easy! Sometimes all these things take is a little imagination.

Last Night

I'd like to point out that a new dance club / bar in Ann Arbor called LIVE (at PJs) is a pretty good place to party. It's where D'Amato's used to be, on the corner of First and Huron. Last night the crowd was clearly largely not from Ann Arbor, as people were break-dancing. Ghostly product Jacob does a good DJ set with his friend. There was this girl in pink boots and a pink shawl. Her hair was blond and up and she had on huge hoop earrings. In short, she looked great, and she danced with passion and grace. There was also a girl who was just about as pretty but danced wildly, as if she were coked out, which she most likely was. The girl in the pink actually gave me the "you, come over here" signal with her finger, but I did the wise thing and gave her a smile and raise of my glass and stayed on the placid margins. First, I knew she didn't really mean it. Second, I knew that even if she meant it, if I had actually gone over and danced with her she would very soon cease meaning it. Third, why spoil the umblemished image? Even if things had gone fine and I had gotten to know her, likely I would've found out that in more ways than one she would be less than stellar. There was also a girl who was very tall, and when someone pointed out to me that she was beautiful, it occurred to me that when girls are taller than me I do not stop to consider their beauty. Is that wrong? Also, the guy checking IDs at the door is a dick. He's Asian and buff and was wearing a gray tieless suit. He was checking IDs of a "good-looking and fashionable" couple in front of me --- the guy was about six foot five --- and he had to stop and have a chat with them! When I heard him say "what's your name?" to the tall guy and extend his hand, I had had just about enough, and, like a tailback splitting his offensive line, ducked in between the couple in the middle of their conversation and presented forcefully my ID. The Asian guy said "Thanks" to me while flashing me a cold straight glare. But I was in.

The Cold, Hard Facts (Brought to you by Coors Light)

Simply to articulate the phenomenon of difference, I'd like to point out that in Iraq there is a trauma surgeon seeing patients, kids and mothers and the old coming in with legs blown off and eyesight obliterated by shrapnel and the shock of a bomb, while I sit here currently in front of a computer screen, sipping a latte. I have no sentimental agenda. I simply want to point out that these two things are happening in the world at the same time.

Huffy Henry

During a time like this, Henry’s pose on the toilet was erect, comfortable, untroubled. If he had a softer seat he might have stayed for hours, and he often thought about purchasing one of those smooth thickly padded covers. He would choose a primary color, red or blue, maybe even yellow. Or he would choose something else, his only criteria that it be bright and warm.

During a time like this, when the anxiety had mellowed and he could be happily cognizant of his own uselessness, he held and read no book, nor hunched over in desperation, but rather looked with serenity at the wall in front of him, glancing every now and then at the mirror-wall to his left and giving himself a little wink.

The room in which Henry shat had three green walls and the mirror-wall, a spotless slippery white tiled floor, a gold rack for toilet paper, a white state-of-the-art, utterly uncloggable toilet, and a green rug situated in front of him so that his feet did not get too cold. On the walls without mirrors hung black-framed pictures. One was a Steiglitz photo of a very young girl with a dirty face and eyes wide and crazy from too much working, one a perfect photo Henry had taken in Mexico of a bare spiky tree silouhetted against the blue sky, and the other a drawing of the fattest and happiest-looking Buddha Henry had ever laid his eyes upon. It was during times like this, when he didn’t have to work, when he didn’t have to go against himself, that Henry felt most like the eternally cross-legged Buddha. Earlier in the day he had welcomed the unexpected urge to defecate as one might welcome a knock on the door from a good friend--something to do not productive professionally but rather in a more basic and human and generous way. To shit, to talk to a friend, to eat a hamburger.

But Henry’s ass was starting to hurt and he knew that if he stayed much longer, the urge now gone, the seat would redden his skin and even start to hurt the bone. He wiped. He sent his waste tumbling, wailing away.

From Tom Bissell's story "Death Defier"

There really were, Donk had often thought, and thought again now, two kinds of people in the world: Chaos People and Order People...It was not meant in a condescending way. No judgement; it was purely an empirical matter. Chaos People, Order People. Anyone who doubted this had never tried to wait in line, board a plane, or get off a bus among Chaos People. The next necessary division of the world's people took place along the lines of whether they actually knew what they were. The Japanese were Order People and knew it. Americans and English were Chaos People who thought they were Order People. The French were the worst thing to be: Order People who thought they were Chaos People. But Afghans, like Africans and Russians and the Irish, were Chaos People who knew they were Chaos People, and while this lent the people themselves a good amount of charm, it made their countries berserk, insane. Countries did indeed go insane. Sometimes they went insane and stayed insane. Chaos People's countries particularly tended to stay insane.

Hemingway on deadlines

From The Green Hills of Africa:

But it is not pleasant to have a time limit... It is not the way hunting should be. It is too much like those boys who used to be sent to Paris with two years in which to make good as writers or painters after which if they had not made good, they could go home and into their fathers' business. The way to hunt is for as long as you live against as long as there is such and such an animal; just as the way to paint is as long as there is you and colors and canvas, and to write as long as you can live and there is pencil and paper or ink or any machine to do it with, or anything you care to write about, and you feel a fool, and you are a fool, to do it any other way.

you've got a nagging suspicion

From an abstract in the Journal of Advanced Nursing 25(1) pp 38-44:

Notions of the 'postmodern' pervade various fields of study, but have rarely been applied to the practice and theory of nursing. This paper uses some conceptions of the 'postmodern' to remedy this.

Response to Jody Rosen's article on Billy Joel from slate.com

Fair enough, Jody, fair enough.

But I think defining his problem as hubris is harsh. Why not just say the guy tried a few things that didn't work, and a few that did? They're all still out there, and we can just skip "Pressure" and "We Didn't Start the Fire" for "Vienna" and "Italian Restaurant." To say that a guy's efforts to make a different type of song is evidence of his excessive pride is, to me, presumptuous.

Secondly, did you have to write this?

Reason I ask that is because, you know, look at Billy now. He's in and out of rehab, he crashes his motorcycle, he's famously sad, he's weeping in his corner. Part of this his surely his deal --- his lyrics are treacly and they expose him to lashings; he after all puts the alcohol in his own mouth; he's maybe too angry and might try too hard. But he's also been screwed over by record companies, and he's received probably numerous condemnations such as the one you delivered (indeed in this sense you are not saying a whole lot that is new). Could you maybe spare him? The quality of mercy, after all, is not strained.

All this reminds me of an article I read once by novelist Robert Stone comparing the work of Jack Kerouac and Herman Melville. Stone in the end appreciates Melville's work much more than Kerouac's. He then adds, "But let us, Kerouac's survivors, remember how much the work from which all this comes moved so many young people, and also remember how cruel, how brutal and heartless most of the mainstream media were to Jack Kerouac and his work during his lifetime. How in ridiculing his unarmored, vulnerable prose they broke his too tender heart and helped destroy him."

As uncool as it may make me, I'm asking you to be nice.

winter returns

Seasonal Affective Disorder is the name hypochondriacs have bestowed upon their reflexive dislike of the end of November. It is apparently the result of overproduction of melatonin, a sleep-related hormone that the brain secretes from the pineal gland when it's dark out. If the brain could be convinced to output even more melatonin, we might all hibernate through the winter. Hibernation would make us all happier, especially as we would then be obligated to devour potato chips and milkshakes all autumn.

Winter depression was elevated to Disorder status in the early 1980s by National Institute of Mental Health researcher Norman Rosenthal. I bet Norm and his colleagues were pretty thrilled by their acronym, SAD. I wonder how many other catchy names they tried. I'm guessing they started with Pinealic Enhanced Sleepy Sadness Induced by Melatonin In Snowy Months (PESSIMISM) and moved on from there.

You'd think that I would love the winter. My ancestors are all from chilly parts of Europe, many from isolated bits of Russia where they wear fur and drink vodka and slap each other on the back making hearty "brrrr" noises. The cold should unearth happy ancestral memories from out of my DNA, make me smile a great polar bear grin and go romping naked in the white snow under the gray skies before I come back to my senses.

Instead I lock myself up in a room with glaring artificial lights and play games of hearts on the computer. You can shoot the moon, over and over again, for an entire game of computer hearts. During November I sometimes wish I could shoot the moon, just to wipe the knowing smirk off its glowing face. "Yeah," I'd gloat, as it oozed blue cheese through the stratosphere and onto the sidewalk, "If I could float above the clouds, far out of the reach of the knife-cold wind, I'd radiate too." And then, glaring at it, I'd suddenly notice how pockmarked its face was, once your eyes adjust to the glow. The moonshine is just a cover, a furtive bathtub gin that can make even the stoutest Russian forget a lifetime of punishing abuse. Goodnight moon.

See, Seasonal Affective Disorder will drop you like that. You're on top of the world, taking out satellites, and next thing you know you're huddled in a dirty booth in a greasy diner, eating potato chips and chugging milkshakes.

McClintic Goes to a Cubicle

"Oh, but let me tell you, I just love quiet at night. There's this comic I saw of this woman sitting in this wine-dark chair -- my chair is in fact the color of red wine -- and over her head is a sign that says 'coffee' and there's a cat by her feet and she's reading a book. That's exactly me at night. My husband, we have that Lehrer guy on at night, we just have it going, but it's just chatter, talk talk talk, and after a while I can't stand it. I just want quiet. My husband can't believe that I just finished a book and am started on another one. He tells me to take a break, but what am I gonna do?"

"Do you drink coffee at night?"

"Sometimes I drink coffee, or tea, although I drink an awful lot of diet lemon-lime soda. And I have to admit, I just love playing games on the computer. Bridge, solitaire, there's this game that you play with yourself, I don't remember what it's called, but it just makes the most wonderful sound, it has this wonderful sound of falling water."

"I like Pac-man."

"Now I find pac-man too fast. Those guys are so little on the computer and I can't keep up. But at the arcade that was the only game I played. At Detroit Metro Airport they used to have pac-man and I used to play while waiting for my flights. I just loved it. I love watching them run around and the sounds the game makes."

Outside, there's snow on the cars. There's work to do, data to enter, diseases to take care of, people to talk to, forms to be processed. Outside, it's cold. There's winter on the windows, gray sky-screen, green coniferous. Inside, computers hum. It's like being around family. The bright beautiful constancy. When I turn it off, it sighs sadly. It seems that, outside, everything is outrageously peaceful, and, true, I almost envy the stillness. Not really wanting to go anywhere because right here's just fine thanks because things tend to come along of their own sweet accord.

The Cosmos

Odd characterization of McClinctic Sphere, named after Thelonious Sphere Monk, legendary and "iconoclastic" (according to a practice SAT test I took in high school) piano player who pioneered a style called, curiously, BEBOP. Oddly, Thelonious sounds like he can't play, but he sounds clumsily good. Because turns out he really can play and his pretending not to able to is his way of asserting his dominance, as if to say, "I could play like a virtuoso for you if I wanted. Instead I'm going to try and make music." So McClintic, on taking his practice SAT test so as to get into a good college so as to acquire universal admiration manifested in a collective pat-on-the-back that knocks him over, so as to, indeed, so, when he reads this practice question he doesn't answer anything else, for he realizes his birthright, his namesake, so to speak, which is to be musically legendary and iconoclastic. That's when he starts playing his saxophone ad nauseam. He goes away into a sort of hiding, stops bathing and dressing for the most part, and toots away in the woodshed that is his bedroom, skipping school, first learning from the past masters but then going his own funny way --- not funny as in ha-ha, but funny as in peculiar --- until he sounds like a perverse mix of Ornette Coleman and a cricket. Indeed, according to him, and to the other few visionaries in the world, this IS music, and he makes it without joy or despair, as if he is making a dinner of rice and beans. And to those that spurn him, he says, "Fuckin' A!"

MCCLINTIC ATTENDS HIS COUSIN'S DAUGHTER'S 3RD BIRTHDAY PARTY

I arrive in a bad mood, and decide to sit on the couch, not talk to anyone, and stare at the football game on the big screen TV. I'm quite happy to do this.

Charu, an attractive married family friend with one daughter, comes into the living room munching on pistachios and tells my father and me a joke. I reluctantly listen, largely because she's attractive (I used to flirt with her back before I was convinced that she wouldn't leave the box). She tells about half of it in English, and half in Punjabi, but I get the gist, which is that there is this man who is making a cross-country bus trip and is squirming in his seat the whole way. When someone asks him why he's squirming, he looks in his pants and finds an ant. Very angry, he broods on how he will punish it. Killing it instantly would be too easy. He wants to make it suffer. Charu's punchline is bipartite, which to me seems to be her first mistake. She delivers it in awkward rapid-fire: first he tells the ant to walk back across the country, then he changes his mind and makes it live in Detroit. She erupts in high-pitched machine-gun laughter, and my father in low-pitched. They look to me for my reaction. I find the joke unfunny. Nonetheless I force out something that resembles a laugh, but also a cough, gag, grunt, or snort. I think I need to recalibrate.

My father has one of his own. "What do rednecks do for Halloween?"

No one knows a thing.

"Pump kin."

This I like immensely. Everyone except Charu laughs.

Then my cousin's husband, Arun, father of birthday girl Anushka, sits next to me, slaps my thigh, and says, "So McClintic, tell me about hepatitis A. How is it spread?" Arun has a bushy mustache and wears glasses. He's on his way to India tomorrow, and stacked with pathogen prophylaxis.

I savor the explanation. "The transmission is fecal-oral."

I leave it out there in the open air, trusting that someone will riff on it in some way. Unsurprisingly, it's my father, who tells Arun that what this means is that you do not buy samosas from the samosa vendor who goes to the bathroom, doesn't wash his hands, then rolls samosa dough on his thigh. Everyone laughs again. I realize that I enjoy scatology. "Don't eat samosas that are made in the bathroom," I add, probably unnecessarily.

The gauche talk ceases when the kids -- there are six of them, ranging from 2 years to 10 years old -- come into the living room in a dense group to play "Put the Round Pink Circle on the Clown's Nose." It's a variation of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," I guess. The kids take turns blindfolding themselves and finding the clown poster. One of them, a short 2 year old with a small head and huge eyes who looks like an amalgamation of Chauncey Billups, Carlos Arroyo, and my dad's colleague manages to place the circle directly on the clown's crotch. The birthday girl, a good Hindu, puts it on his forehead. Aseem, a tall 10 year-old, places it on his head. In the end, no one gets it perfectly, so they all get candy.

I enjoy watching the kids go for the elusive nose. The game seems simple and pleasureable, so much so that I almost want to participate. The whole thing is a welcome diversion from the adult talk that has sprung up in all corners of the house. Some dude I don't know, who probably thinks I don't know anyone and am lonely, introduces himself forcefully. For a moment I think he's going to stab me, and I flinch. We exchange names, then neither of us says another word. The kids are pretty and having fun. I spend the next twenty minutes being amused by them.

Then I smell dinner. I fill my plate. I take an almost religious pleasure in the food. Chick peas, mattar paneer, roti, chicken, rice, other stuff. Most likely all really bad for you, but incredibly good. I stare at it longingly and lovingly. With everyone else engaged in similarly devoted forms of eating, the place takes on a silent, meditative quality.

But, quickly, sadly, it's over. Full, I get sleepy and doze off. When I wake up, I hear people talking about how nice some wife is to some husband, how she fixes his outfits for the week and how they have such a good relationship, how they're good friends, how they care about each other, etc., and I feel the doom-and-gloom descending again like a bold gray cloud. I take a pillow and lie down on the floor. I glance at the TV. I glance at the clown poster. Someone has placed the circle perfectly on his nose. It seems way too late to me, and the rest of the night becomes a dazed series of agreeable expressions.

The only thing I remember is when Anushka sits in front of her cake with a big "3" on it and we sing to her and then she spits on the candle and cuts the cake and scoops up a little icing with her finger and sucks it clean. She has a round face with fat cheeks. She's wearing a pink flowerly dress and a pink tiara. We clap and we kiss her, take pictures of her, and she looks out of the corner of her eye at us a little bit shyly and then lowers her head into her chest. Then she giggles, jumps up and down, and looks delighted.

"Anushka, tell everyone how old you are," someone says.

She looks at her mother. "Tee," she says sheepishly.

Tee! Tee! Everyone repeats it at least once. Then cake! Cake! Everyone eat cake! The portions (big cubes), plates, forks, ice cream (mango kulfi), are parceled out quickly, and quickly, and quietly again, we go for the fat.

Suave robot 

Pensive Robot 

Larissa MacFarquhar on John Ashbery / Nonstop service to Atlanta

"It's late already, five or five-thirty. John Ashbery is sitting at his typewriter but not typing. He picks up his cup of tea and takes two small sips because it's still quite hot. He puts it down. He's supposed to write some poetry today."

The young couple occupying 13E and 13F barely sit down before they whip out identical manila folders. Each contains the other's resume. I think they're resumes, rather than CVs, because I imagine CVs are less bullet-pointed, more narrative. I'm not sure though, since the only job I've ever applied for, namely bussing dishes at a crap country-club in the Allentown suburbs, required neither.

"He woke up pretty late this morning and has been futzing around ever since. He had some coffee. He read the newspaper. He dipped into a couple of books: a Proust biography that he bought five years ago but just started reading because it suddenly occurred to him to do so, a novel by Jean Rhys that he recently came across in a secondhand bookstore--he's not a systematic reader."

Her name is Christin, which bothers me. She wears a ring that supports a monstrous diamond. I'm not sure what his name is, but he wears a longsleeve green shirt and has no earlobes.

"He flipped on the television and watched half of something dumb. He didn't feel up to leaving the apartment--it was muggy and putrid out, even for New York in the summer. He was aware of a low-level but continuous feeling of anxiety connected with the fact that he hadn't started writing yet and didn't have an idea."

During the twenty minutes before we start taxiing from the gate, the five minutes when we taxi back up to the gate after the captain notices we've left some luggage behind on the tarmac, and the first forty-seven minutes of the flight, Christin and her husband intensely edit their resumes. They both work for Ford, she as a Marketing and Communications Specialist, he as a Product Marketing and Cross-Vehicle Planning/Strategy Manager. I suspect that he has fabricated his job title.

"His mind flitted about. He thought about a Jean Helion painting that he'd seen recently at a show. He considered whether he should order in dinner again from a newish Indian restaurant on Ninth Avenue that he likes. (He won't go out. He's seventy-eight. He doesn't often go out these days.)"

Christin edits with a ferocity that startles the men on both sides of her. "I don't think you need to butcher that section like you're trying to," her husband complains. I read the New Yorker. "Do you happen to know what the American sales volume was?" she asks (her husband, not me). "It's in dealer profits, right?" Then, sulkier: "Your first bullet point was a run-on sentence."

"On a trip to the bathroom he noticed that he needed a haircut. He talked on the phone to a poet friend who was sick."

"That's a key accomplishment!" Mr. No-Earlobes protests. He has a B.A. from M.S.U.. He flips Christin's resume face-down on his tray-table angrily, hissing, "I think we should take a break from this and try again later." She disagrees. "You can write down whatever you want," he says, turning to stare fixedly out the window. She does, finally ceasing her crossing-out and re-bulleting to turn her attention to a paperback copy of "Diary of a Mad Bride." One of the diary entries read, "Antonio the architect. I forgot how good he looks wet." Her husband reads the SkyMall catalog. Forwards, then backwards, then forwards again.

"By five o'clock, though, there was no avoiding the fact that he had only an hour or so left before the working day would be over, so he put a CD in the stereo and sat down at his desk. He sees that there's a tiny spot on the wall that he's never noticed before. It's only going to take him half an hour or forty minutes to whip out something short once he gets going, but getting going, that's the hard part."

infatuated robot

Bemused Robot 

Dancing Robot 

Swordplay

This is to announce that, the day after the Pistons demolished the Sixers in their spirited home-opener, looking more lithe and fluid and relaxed under Flip, and still "playing the right way," McClintic and Benny P will square off in a duel of sorts, modeled after the early 1800s duel of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. At stake will be not only the supremacy of a basketball city, which seems to be already decided, but also wealth, power, and general monstrosity. The only thing that may save us now is a dancing robot, of sorts. And, the plural possessive, which conveys, however crudely, that this stuff is all of ours together.

Classically Speaking

One of the defining moments of my teen years was when I was on PalaceVision. RPB, SV4, D, Jeff, and I -- aka the Classic Friends -- brought a sign to the Pistons' game that read "PISTON PRIDE." Alliterative, terse, not sentimental or cute, it was a success, and we were on the big screen not once, but a few times. Seeing myself up there was a young dream, and then when I did, I remember being surprised at how little, and a bit silly, and gleeful, I looked. We held the sign across our chests, and could barely keep it stable. We jumped up and down, clambered over each other, quickly exhausted our relative fame. None of us really had the poise to find the camera shooting us and look directly into its face, wave, point, or look cool. We were eager and star-eyed. The game had its honesty. The pleasure was simple.

After they won, we danced around the corridors of the stadium with our sign, making up little chants. "We got Piston Pride, Ho! We got Piston Pride, Hey!" .... "It's time for the Pride-a-lator...", etc

This past Sunday, we (minus Jeff) reunited for SV4's birthday and the Lions game. Now it's Fall. Sweaters are out. The clocks are back to losing time. Before heading to SV4's, I go for a run during which I stop to linger under a motherly tree with salmon-colored leaves.

We are all intact and healthy. RPB pimps scarf and blazer. D is Brazilian Lebron. SV4 wears a woolen sweater. He brings along the new Dabrye. The scheme is black, red, and blue. On the cover a fat toke hangs from Tadd's mouth. We listen to a song on the new Idol Tryouts about a fit black man and a fat white woman. I wonder, Could it be love?

This drive to Detroit, we've done it now hundreds, maybe thousands of times. In fact, RPB lived in the city for a while, I believe. You could describe this drive in so many ways. Today it's like watching a tragedy unfold on speedy time-reel. The city reveals itself to you from above, for the highways are partly underground. Floating ethereally above are the houses, burned-out and half-demolished, the Church's Chickens, Wonder Bread sign, graffiti streaks, steeple and skyscraper momentarily aligned. The rest, the street level, is invisible, as if it does not exist.

We talk about "The Real World" coming to Royal Oak (though they'll most likely call it Detroit), and how D is going to get himself on the show by effortlessly playing one of its women. We talk about MTV's new "Laguna Beach" and how much of a pleasure it is to watch young beautiful people be petty. (cf Matthews, "You have to learn not to apologize, a form of vanity.") We talk about the done-up woman outside The Fox who's wearing a Burberry shawl, and RPB comments on the likelihood that she is in her mid 30s, is single, and is a hairdresser. We discuss booze poos, and how a night after drinking your poo smells just a little bit different as you read that crinkled Car and Driver for the seventh time. Such are our young-blood preoccupations. We have good minds.

We don't have a sign, don't dance, and don't get on TV. We eat sandwiches, chicken fingers (which give me the poos later that night), munchies, and cake. The Lions lose again this time in a disheartening way, an overtime interception return for a touchdown. But our expectations weren't necessarily high, and our disappointment is sweetened by the company.

Because now we're dudes. Not boys. Dudes. Maybe boys in dude-outfits, or boys with dude interpretations, or dudes with boy perceptions. I guess we're somewhere in the middle.

SV4's Mom gives us all elaborate flashlights as parting gifts. In the past she's given us several other flashlights, as well as essentially my entire cabinet of socks. This flashlight is an upgrade. It's also a nightlight, as well as a psychedelic light show. When we drop off RBP and D, RBP lights up his gear in the night and does a little illuminated dance as we drive away. He's getting smaller, the light dimmer.

"Another story to add to our lore," I say.

"Our lore?" SV4 says.

"Our folk-lore."

Next time it'll be in The Real World jacuzzi.

Daily Themes

They are staring into their tupperware bowls. I don't have tupperware, but aluminum foil, and I'm looking at it and admiring the fact that it is both metal and flexible. Out the window, a flock of gray geese swoop down in sync, as if tethered together to a string in the sky. They land on the lake. "I thought the geese go South in the winter," I say.

Kris, a skinny British woman who talks often of tea time and her love of overcast weather, says, "Not all of them. And they're just an atrocious nuisance in the winter."

I ask her to elaborate, and she explains that their droppings harden and then melt with a brief thaw just like the snow. There's doo doo slush everywhere, all over the grass and the walkways.

Everyone but Lillian is looking out the window now. Lillian is my close colleague, and I like her. She's seventy-one, and I wonder if she's in the early stages of senile dementia. She tends to enter long periods of impenetrable silence, during which times she stares blankly at the wall. Today she's sitting across from me, which means I'm constantly wondering if she's staring at me. Sometimes I think, "Who knows?" Maybe she still has her full mind and just likes to brood on facts.

"Oh, look at those colors," Kathy says. Kathy is the clinic nurse. She's skinny, but not British, and is kind of kind and a super worker. She's 42, married, with three teenage boys who are active in sports. Every weeknight it seems she's off to some Detroit suburb to watch high schoolers run hard/jump on top of each other/bounce balls/fight.

Someone mentions how brilliant the colors must be up North. Kris promptly shuts this idea down, saying how it seems silly to drive six hours, glance at trees, then turn around and come back. The way she puts it, I tend to agree.

On the table is a box of donuts from Meijer that Kathy brought in to celebrate Gillian's recent engagement. Thinking that a Meijer donut couldn't be good, I take a bite of a glazed and am pleased by the familiar fatty sweetness. It leaves no film in the mouth. I eat the whole thing.

Gillian is a tech. She's a little bit husky and has a round face and pinchable cheeks. She blushes easily. She's been blushing all day today. We all take turns gazing at her ring, which sparkles enough that it makes my eyes hurt. Pat, a secretary, says, while looking directly at me, "See, you have to make sure that it sparkles." Pat is from Florida but has a New Jersey accent. For some reason, I'm not irritated by her comment. I laugh.

Pat starts talking about the Monday night lineup on NBC. She names all the shows. The only one I remember now is "King of Queens." Pat loves them. "I like to laugh on Mondays," she says. (cf Fellini, "There is nothing sadder than laughter...")

Suddenly, Kathy starts talking about horror movies. She's constantly filled with enormous energy and rattles through a series of scary films her sons like. "They loved 'The Ring Two,' she says. They thought it was scarier than 'The Ring One.'" And on she goes. Nightmare on Elm, Halloween, the entire Stephen King oeuvre, we get the entire list, and everyone except Lillian, who still is gazing at the wall, affirms their scariness. And then finally Lillian speaks up, "Those kinds of films never scare me. I have a way of detaching myself."

It's the only thing she's said all of lunch. A long silence follows, during which Kathy stares at her huge bottle of ranch dressing. I look at it too. I wonder if the bottle is actually white with black specks in it or if it's transparent and it's the dressing that gives it that color. I try to figure out what Kathy is looking at, and decide it's the label, which has "99% fat free" written on it as well as a cartoon depiction of rolling hills surrounded by fall trees. Realizing that that's the exact scene outside the window, I avert my gaze that way. And then Kathy joins my line of vision. Lillian is back to examining the wall.

I guess it's all a matter of vantage. I think these people are becoming my friends.

Is this guy boring you?

UNIVISION PRESENTS:
Una Escritura para Una Telenovela Existencial

SCENE 1

[Static-garbled Spanish pop facilitates the conversion from sleep to 2:55 in the morning, replaces the confusion of disturbed r.e.m. with the disorientation of half-received Latin pop.]

Paco Pico Piedra: [Confused, tumbles from the bed and finds the ground, his Gap carpenter pants with the stylish hammer loop, a rumpled long sleeve T-shirt. He struggles into the clothes on autopilot and lurches out the door and down the stairs with sack-of-potato grace. He coughs, then faces the camera and speaks.] Outside, the moon pierces through rippled clouds, waifish vapors seeded by exhaust from thousands of airplanes braving the city smog to deliver millions of haggard businessmen and tired tourists from various Asian countries into this teeming, sleepless, cliché-ridden metropolis. How poetically the light dimly reveals the paisley sofa sitting squat in the college quad. The couch should be lonely, here amongst the sad palm trees and scrawny grass that would wither up and die without constant watering and attention from teams of Mexican gardeners, but it is not, thanks to the comfort provided by a Mr. Coffee machine that burbles happily to itself on an equally misplaced endtable. Strewn about are donut boxes, at this hour containing only those pastries with unidentifiable jelly fillings.

Paisley Sofa (played by midget actor): [sighs contentedly]

Paco: [Eats too many peculiar donuts and excitedly whispers three-in-the-morning delusions.] Occasionally we abandon our assumptions (gestures towards paisley sofa) to saunter about the dormitory buildings, stumbling drunkenly with early morning inebriation. Campus is quiet but the raccoons are noisy, seven little babies and two large parents as big as Rottweilers but of indeterminate ferocity. We crumple bits of cake into #4 unbleached cone coffee filters and feed the raccoons pastry, which they appear to enjoy. On past evenings we have made offerings of lime-flavored Tostitos, but icing seems more to their liking.

Raccoon Chorus (animated, a la Mary Poppins): [pensively] We live in a big hole under the “annex,” which is really a trailer but can’t be called such because of the negative connotations. Only a single family of raccoons can survive in this particular isolated area of Southern California, so a great deal of inbreeding occurs amongst our folk, giving credence to trailer stereotypes.

(Camera pans up from animated raccoons towards heavens, where stars shine brightly as they slowly arc across the sky. Occasionally stars veer off of arc and can be seen doing the "hokey-pokey.")

[By four, giddiness has subsided into exhaustion, and those who cannot find a place on the midget's lap curl up into fetal positions on the concrete.]

Time: [sludges by]

Consciousness: [retreats upon itself]

Rosa: [raising her head from the concrete and looking alarmed] Wayward sofas are irrelevant in the witching hours, and the donuts are obsolete. Five o’clock oozes forth like cold honey, finally relenting and letting us stumble back upstairs to warm beds or creaking sofas or hard floors to sleep with no time for dreams.

[Fade to black]

SCENE 2

[Raccoon chorus stands on each others' shoulders to make the shape of a “2,” then scamper off past the coffee-stained reception desk of a dirty Travelodge]

Travelodge Receptionist: [Peering at Paco and Rosa over the top of half-glasses on a chain of the type popularized by grandmas and librarians] Even during the day, Tijuana is not Mexico; at night, Tijuana is barely Tijuana. You will pass through the clanging turnstiles with no small trepidation, the act feeling illegal and somehow dirty. Silent streets greet the border-crossers, not completely empty, but apocalyptically quiet. Here and there individual males trudge in ebbs, coming and going from somewhere unspecified in the night. Fearless Americans will pursue the human trickle towards its source, passing the occasional locked cage with a fearsome mechanical bull, a gyroscope with boots attached for strapping in those who have had too much to drink and agree to be strapped into a gyroscope.

[Paco and Rosa wave farewell to the Travelodge Receptionist, turn their backs to the reception desk, and cross a concrete bridge over the Rio Tijuana, an unglorified drainage-ditch channel replete with stagnant, unpleasant smelling water.]

Paco: [to Rosa] See how the tide of strangers grows as we walk through the deserted streets. Like raccoons after a tortilla chip we follow unthinking, the dull thump of nightclub music slowly seeping into our ears, whispering against our ear drums.

Downtown: [in a swirl of neon and drunk pedestrians] No cover! Half-price and topless! [Gives Paco and Rosa a sour look, less empty but no more wholesome.]

Teasers: [bad suits, bad english] No cover, half-price, topless...

[Paco and Rosa accept an invitation, slap Teaser on back, climb dimly lit stairs into a throbbing inferno. Rosa is asked for ID despite being sixty-seven years old, Paco is briefly frisked. They drink two-dollar Coronas and tip the waiter after he demands to be tipped. Bad dance music penetrates the skull and bounces about in the sinuses, the head convulses against the beat and the hideous lyrics. The tequila bouncer lurks menacingly in the shadows, pouncing on each table in turn. He stings from behind, wrapping a towel around the neck with the left arm and thrusting a putrid bottle of tequila with his right. Physical force is needed to rebut his advances, but at last he withdraws.]

Paco (holding aloft a skull, to which he speaks): That man there is as a wasp in the room. I keep my right eye on his whereabouts at all times, but my left eye roves across the dance floor to ponder a lone, rotund lady sitting at a bar stool and jiggling up and down to the music. She looks like she would enjoy being asked to dance, but I decline. [Paco becomes uncomfortable from having each of his eyes looking in different directions.]

Paco and Rosa: [singing, each to a different tune] We leave and wander, no cover, half-price, topless, eventually passing through vinyl curtains into a little yellow bar. We crowd into a confused, circular booth, the unevenly round chair threatening to tip us plunging into the small table, drowning us in rounds of Coronas. Movies dubbed in Spanish play silently on yellowed TV screens overhead. We ask the bartender for directions to Senor Frog’s, a club we have seen advertised on billboards, T-shirts. He gives us directions but we speak Spanish badly. The bartender fetches a taxi-driver friend of his, who informs the bar is too far to walk but he could drive us for cheap. We decline because we fear being murdered.

Taxi Driver: [proudly, undeterred by Americans’ refusal to ride in his taxi] You like cocaina? Best cocaina en Mexico. You come right here si want coke.

Paco’s Nose: I must agree the yellow bar would definitely be my first choice for future coke needs.

SCENE 3

[Paco’s Nose appears and grows larger and larger, until the camera is snorted up into the left nostril… hairs hanging from the nostril roof brush against the camera lens like greasy stalactites, leaving little trails of snot. A little further inside the cavernous nostril, we see all of Tijuana laid out before us as if we were approaching by hot-air balloon.]

Tijuana and Time: [slipping in and out of little pieces of consciousness, they perform a dance resembling the Tango, but occasionally utilizing the “pinkie swing” from a basic square dance. Time leads, Tijuana sometimes follows.]

[Somewhere inside Tijuana's dancing streets, Paco wanders into an ornate church, where a high school graduation appears to be taking place. Avoiding the crowds of Mexican teenagers in paperboard hats and their anxious mothers, he staggers into the confessional box at the rear of the church and kneels.]

Paco: Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Father: No eres Catolico, verdad?

Paco: I have seen unspeakable things, Father.

Father: Lo siento, mi nino, pero no hablo Ingles.

Paco: The horror! The horror!

Loud voice: ¿Qué hizo Paco? ¿Hacen cuántos "Avemarías" él tiene que hacer? Averigüe el próximo tiempo... aquí mismo en Univision!

END SCENE

Autumn Meditation

The trees were yellow and red. The leaves on the trees were of a yellow hue dotted with black rot, but the red was initially brilliant and remained so until the papery leaves, the papery, silky, shining, greasy leaves fell as leaves tend to fall to the ground --- that is, reluctantly, bobbing, cradling in the wind as if the real comfort were not in the tree or on the cold, soft ground but rather in that insubstantial middle, that place where words and notes go, dreams possibly go, and all the things invisible but existing, and so somehow meaningful. Surely, the drama is in the chasm. And then that is not the lesson. No, the lesson is in the leaves, the jagged, shimmering, silent, dull leaves hanging like heavy, inutile hands on the end of the bodies of silent, skeletal ghosts, in a world haunted by the dim memories of previous losses, in a world cold and then warm, in a universe endless and incomprehensible in its black, blazing continuity, in its persistent, perfect-fifth hum, its speed. And that incomprehensibility is the lesson. And, surely, then, it is not. No, the lesson is in the bark on the trees that holds the yellow and red leaves, the bark rotten and indigestible and dry and hard and cold, the bark the dry, thin, filmy covering over the rings of the years inside the massive diameter of the unhuggable tree, the years that circle each other in perfect order. But then the distance between each line begins to lessen as each year goes by until the lines have become indistinct and inseparable, have in fact become one continuous line going around and around, forgetting the hops and leaps, the poignant peaks, the memorable trinkets, the things a tree holds onto because there are not many other things to hold onto and so each one can be accounted for and glanced at on occasion and even loved. Painful, profound, the tree digs deep, its roots descending steeply at first and then gradually, because a tall structure needs a wide base. And storm after storm blasts its husky frame. Over and over the needling rains impinge upon its leaves, and the leaves fall and turn downwards and the tree sways and bucks, and the branches snap and splinter and fall on houses, on cars, on the ground, on dogs, on people, and the gray sky looks peaceful despite the water flooding it, the wind pursuing it, the shocks of light speeding through it. And then there are the deep cries after, as if somewhere in that roiling sky there is a sad person, face contorted in a mask of grief, indeed a grief large enough that it can only be manifested in this way, as if the storm, and the tree falling to the ground and destroying the mud and the house on top of the mud, and the floor in the house, and the beds and pianos and sofas and tables on the floor, as if the storm that crawls over our landscape is all of the pain of the world come together. All of it. Every tear and moan. Seeing it in this light, it is not at all unsurprising that the next day everything is on the ground, that the leaves, rot red and yellow, flattened and two-dimensional, are on the ground, next to everything big and small. And now everything is still and quiet, indeed almost comfortable, as if this is where it all belonged, as if this is the way things were supposed to be, as you look out over the miles and miles of disorder, as you pick up something small, like a pendant, or a wedding ring, or a music box, or a record or book, or a picture of, say, lovers, or a family, or a dead son, and look, yay, stare, yay, glare, at everything that could have come of it if not for all this pain --- this hulking, huffing-and-puffing, obese and snorting pain --- and everything that still could, despite all this death, despite the night that is coming although the sun has just risen.

Oh? Oh.

That man is not an astronaut...

He thinks the falling stars, are falling to the ground.

He prefers the seedy bars, there's no beer in space.

He's been around the world and he, he, he, he can't find his baby.

He's kind of short and smug, he's got real greasy hair.

He's way too commonplace, his jacuzzi is lukewarm.

He was born on a farm, he wants to milk the cows, to till the fields, to hack the oats, to gather the corn, kill the cows, play in the hay.

It's not as dark in the bar, as it is in space.

His feet stay on the ground, his steps are very small (allusion to giant steps on the moon).

He's not hip to the Buzz, nor aware of Neil.

In 1969, he was taking a crap.

Who? Me? What? Ohhhhhh!

That man is not an astronaut. He prefers to catch the stars, in empty pickle jars.

That man is not an astronaut. He doesn't drive a car, his mailbox is too far.

" " There's so much shit on land, he doesn't understand.

" " He's lazier than me, and I'm no astronaut.

He's lazier than me, his leisure gives him glee.

He's lazier than me, he's happy with TV.

He's lazier than me, the choice is wide and never free.

He's got no initiative, sometimes he's downright plaintive.

He's got a lot a girth, he can't get off the Earth.

He's not so into that, he's not a fan o' that.

Though fifty years from now, he'll have his own space cow.

In many ways he is, he doesn't realize it.

If only he would see, all the things that he could be.

His own small vehicle, is plenty powerful.

He doesn't want to be, all the things he wants to be.

He's got a spaceship head, it's keeping him in bed.

contributions

Friends,

As it turns out, Mars is currently as close to us as it will ever be during our lifetime. You can see it burning red in the southeastern sky, early in the cold night. Clearly, the juxtaposition of the God of War upon my return to the United States can only be a heavenly portent, a celestial dictum requiring me to write and record the ethereal song "That Man is Not An Astronaut." To do so, your assistance is needed.

As you wander through these gray days, please take some time to think about potential verses for this still-gestating song. Examples will be given below. Submit your suggestions via email or the blog.

Verses are remarkably short, so short that some might question whether they are truly verses. Examples include:

1) "That man is not an astronaut- He's too afraid of heights, he's sick on Ferris wheels"
2) "That man is not an astronaut- He never drinks his Tang, he's got no Velcro shoes"
3) "That man is not an astronaut- He can't do calculus, Spacemen need their calculus"
4) "That man is not an astronaut- He's never been to Mars, I've never seen him there"

Thank you.

Good Food

Lunch with Sam -- friend of sixteen years or so -- and talked about the indefinable nature of relationships and experience, about the warring instincts of wholesomeness and sordidness. Riding in his new Cadillac SUV, we listened to Mobb Deep, hip-hop act of the mid-90s. Crisp production, minor key loops, light voices, light but menacing music. Good groove. You could sit in the groove, you could lie down in the groove, you could dance in the groove, you could contemplate the groove.

I will head down to the jazz festival again tonight and engage in the perilous games of my existence and the minor but significant pains they cause, the feeling behind the eyes. There are canoers out on the river. The river is no longer iridescent and the sun has receded slightly behind some clouds, although this would only be a partly cloudy sky. In fact, this is probably the epitome of a partly cloudy sky. The clouds have a gray film over the bottom, like they just ate a large order of McDonald's fries.

There is an inherent sense of the tragic in all experience because of the unavoidable awareness of time passing. Everything you do could be the last, or second-to-last time.

Trickster

I think Bob Dylan is probably some kind of prophet. Never have I heard someone without appreciable musical talent make music that is so affecting. Of course I'm not saying anything new, but it bears repeating. His lyrics are perfect. I'm probably briefly in love with him, and wish I had such jauntiness and bravado. If you'll send some over here, Bob, I'll take it gladly. Actually, I think I've got it already, here in my pocket. Thank you sir. I'll see you at the Hall of Fame.

George Orwell on Being Shot in the Neck

Everything was blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting -- I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well.

in the night

The lack of electricity in my house in the highlands is less bothersome than one might think. I find the kerosene lantern soothing, its constant yellow flame a reassuring tongue of warmth in a cold, remote place. When it is not raining the stars shine gloriously, and the loss of electrical appliances seems a small price to pay for having all of the cosmos apparent overhead.

I'm fairly certain I would feel differently if the place was crawling with bugs. In the house I rented in rural Mexico I had electricity at the flick of a switch, powering my blowing fan and even a small refrigerator. Yet the place was awful because of the constant encroachment into my personal space by all manner of startlingly ugly, and occasionally dangerous, creatures. The Kenyan highlands, however, are far too cold at night to be so invaded.

There are, it's true, the occasional giant cricket-esque insect. They are quite large--let's say the size of a deck of cards (also, coincidentally, the recommended size of a serving of red meat)--and they climb the walls and scuttle behind my bags in a moderately alarming fashion. At first sight, I thought they must be cockroaches, but closer inspection reveals that they are entirely too crickety.

Generally we avoid each other, me in one of my two wooden chairs, the cockroach-cricket contentedly lurking on the wall. Once, though, it jumped off the wall and landed with a resounding thump. There is no furniture in the room other than my chairs and a small stained table, making the room amplify even the small of sounds. It is a delightful effect when I sing to my guitar at night, but a horrible one when it involves the thumping of an insect. Bugs should alight softly, never thump. Thumps are intolerable.

I sleep under an untreated white mosquito net. The villagers assure me that it isn't necessary, since the fierce cold at night reduces mosquito numbers to insignificant levels, but I use it anyway. It isn't for the bugs. I saw only one mosquito in my house during the time I occupy it, and although the empty concrete room amplified its gentle buzz alarmingly so that it reverberated throughout the night, the insect did not seek to feed. I use the mosquito net because it makes me feel safe. It is a torn, porous shroud, but it cocoons me into a manageably small zone of existence, walling me off, even if only slightly, from the dank gloom of my bedroom and the infinite glow of the galaxies outside it.

digression

Last night I was thinking (I have a lot of time to think these evenings), and it occured to me that "Panico en la Discoteca" would be a good name for an album.

For those who do not know, "Panico en la Discoteca" was a short novella we read in high school Spanish class under the tutelage of gay Senor Kutz. It was written with small words and short sentences so that even we novice Spanish speakers could follow the story. The gist, as I recall, was that a handfull of teenage friends go to enjoy themselves at the discoteca, but their night of revelry is cut short when the discoteca catches fire. The eponymous Panico ensues.

A digression from this digression: I remember being required to improvise a scene culled from the exciting mid-section of the novella, in which two of the friends attempt to escape the fire by climbing through a skylight or trapdoor or somesuch. Details escape me, but let's say I was supposed to be Raul. My friend was played by my actual friend Pablo. That was his real name, but let's say it was also that of his character so that this admittedly weak story isn't also needlessly confusing. Anyway, during the course of this escape Raul becomes increasingly frightened by the smoke and Panic and says "I'm scared," or "Tengo miedo." Only I misspoke and said, "Tengo mierda," which means, "I have shit." After an unrelated episode involving a particular vitriolic excuse for an absence from the community-service organization (which, despite its hilarity, will not be printed here) of which Senor Kutz was also the advisor, he would later threaten me with the words, "Nacho, I know your mother."

"Panico en la discoteca" is more striking than either its authors or Senor Kutz could have intended because of the poignant juxtaposition which it contains. The book is written like one intended for small children, since high-school Spanish students have roughly the same vocabulary. "Raul sees his friend Pablo. 'I am scared,' says Raul. 'The window is very high.'" The elementary prose lulls the reader into assuming that the book really is meant for naive tykes, making it all the more jolting when several of the teenagers die at the end from smoke inhalation or being trampled to death during the Panic.

I found the intrusion of these dark themes of realism into the happy "see Jane run" story to be disturbing. "'It is a nice day,' says Jane. 'Let's go to the discoteca.' 'Yes,' says Raul. 'It will be fun.' 'I can't feel my legs,' says Jane." The result is shocking because it is not intended to be as such.

Waking In The Morning

The morning after my first night at the jazz festival, I cut through Ann Arbor and away from the north side of town, driving along the Huron Parkway Prarie, cattails in the middle. In the space of a mile I've seen six or seven joggers, people biking with their little children in tow, some orange construction barrels. Trees abound. I pass a high school, a recreation area, expensive cars, more trees. The sky is blue, clouds are scant, sun is shining. Now I'm going over a bridge over the Huron River. From this elevation I see the sun iridescent on the water. The water opaque in the sunshine almost. I pass a golf course, most people finished with their early morning rounds. There's a lone golfer walking on a path. I wonder if he is that unskilled, or just woke up late. Another jogger. Greenery, greenery, trees, greenery. I'm driving slow, enjoying, taking in the morning.

philanthropy is

I have become very tired of people asking me for money.

I knew that it would happen, but I thought it would be easy to say, "Look, I'm just a student. True, I have white skin, but that does not make me inherently rich," after which the supplicants would leave me in peace, disappointed but understanding.

I did not forsee that those who would come in hopes of a handout would almost invariably be those who did not speak a word of English. It turns out that it's difficult to describe one's poverty to someone who doesn't speak ones language when one is dressed in nicer clothes than they and is carrying around a laptop. Further complicating my determined no-handout stance is the amount of cash requested: a boy initially pleads for five shillings (one shilling is approximately 1.3 cents), until my stonewall refusal has him bargaining for one. A young man, sans several teeth, comes reeking of alcohol and hopes I will give him the equivalent of a quarter. This request follows intense negotiations, none of which I understand. They include the laborious writing of the words "cita misonae," "unisaine," and finally "mainti," in a shaking, spidery script, which I belatedly realize could only mean that he is asking for money to buy booze.

I give him the money he asks for and the next day offer an old man the same so that he can repair his bicycle. I give them money not because I am a good person, but rather because I want them to get out of my house. These transactions make me feel awful. The sums involved are so pitiously insignificant to me that it seems illogical to deny them unless I am obstinately steadfast on doing my best Scrooge imitation. Yet many well-meaning individuals have warned me that these sorts of minor handouts quickly snowball into hundreds of selfish demands.

A group of little girls comes to see me periodically dressed in their Sunday best. I am certain they want money, but they don't know the English words necessary to ask for it. As the days go by, I am also increasingly certain that their parents have put them up to it, which makes me angry. I think so because they are always dressed so nicely and are immensely shy, timidly hiding behind one another and staring at me fearfully. I greet them, and then we stare at each other for several minutes. Eventually I become uncomfortable, or at least even more uncomfortable, until I pass some vague threshold of uncomfortableness that makes me retreat indoors and draw the curtains.

One of the microscopists who works in the clinic assures me it's ok to turn the beggars down. "They don't understand you're a student," he tells me, corroborating my own thoughts on the matter. "They see you with your equipment and your white skin and they assume you're rich." I comfort myself by trying to think he's right. The boy who asked for one shilling--one goddam shilling--had been very friendly to me, and I ended up giving him a whole ten shilling coin. The look of astonished joy on his face was horrible.

I Wish I Was a Baller

We spent the first hour at the free jazz festival buying mediocre, over-priced food and drink. I had a forgettable gyro and Kim some kind of sausage concoction. She also had an expensive wine cooler, and I a beer. Twenty bucks and some mild indigestion later, we caught the end of David 'Fathead' Newman's tribute to Ray Charles, and promptly discovered that Fathead has the speaking voice of a woman. (He was portrayed as much more manly in the movie 'Ray'). Luckily, he plays saxophone. After Fathead we pushed our way forward and sat down on the grass twenty feet or so from the stage. A bunch of people joined us, and the Funk Brothers came on.

Apparently the Funk Brothers are really famous in the world of Motown music. This I did not know. They had a large band with them. For much of the show we thought the Brothers were two old white guys, since everyone else on stage was black and about a decade younger. Turns out they use the word 'brothers' loosely -- they're one white and two blacks. One of the blacks wasn't playing secondary to some kind of feud. The white guy has the look of a New Jersey pizza man, if you can picture it (fat, big nose, balding, eating pizza on stage - actually the last one is not quite true).

The band was mostly middle-aged musicians with ample soul and sagging jowls. There were three singers. One was a guy in a sequined, glittery, silver jacket who did a ton of smiling. One an overweight woman in a sheer blouse who sang quite well. And lastly there was a woman in tight black pants and a holter top whom Kim affectionately called a 'middle-aged hoochie mama.'

The show was a good, but a little too 1950s. It was like listening to a stretch on an oldies station. They played 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered,' 'My Girl,' and a bunch of Marvin Gaye, among other stuff. People seemed to dig it. I would say there were about 800 there, and many were dancing, old and young. I even got into it a bit myself at one point and started rocking back and forth.

An intoxicated man in front of Kim kept looking back at her and smiling and staring at her cleavage. Every time he did that I put my hand on her leg. Then this other dude turned around, said something to her, and touched her foot. What the heck? Then it happened again! By the end of the night I was conspicuously fondling her.

We left around 10:45 pm, sober and wholesome. What I needed then was an incredibly large Johnnie Walker on the rocks. In the car, at a stop light, we watched four men in green T-shirts, almost all with enormous guts, crossing the street. "Why are they all in green T-shirts?" Kim said. "That will remain to be seen," I said, "not by me."

On the way home this guy on a motorcycle riding next to us all of a sudden decided he was going to lie down on his belly while going 80 mph. He did so, and Kim said "Oh my god!" I gave him the thumbs-up, and a toothy smile, then stepped on the gas and left him in the dust.

Back in Ann Arbor, the contrast could not be more stark. College kids, partying on a weekend night, dressed up in their Sunday best or what have you, invariably white. The town polished and dull. I found my craving for large amounts of alcohol deadened by the young crowd, which made me feel like I was at camp. "But camp was fun!" Kim said (she was an earnest band-camper back in the day, still sort of is). Suddenly I was craving Diet Orange Tropicana Twister. This means we had to stop at Speedway, which is the only place I've been able to find the drink, and interact with the amusing man behind the counter. He's fat, bearded, and dirty. He's a cross between John Candy and a hobo, kind of John Candy gone destitute. Perhaps to keep his job interesting, he never stops talking, quite literally. He mumbles a lot to himself. Some people are distinctive without even knowing it.

I found my glee at the cold refreshing taste of the Twister sullied by an argument Kim and I embarked upon. I couldn't repeat details. Suffice it to say that it culminated in Kim yelling, "I'm not having your baby!" At this point my Twister was still half full. I closed my eyes and took a huge swig, savoring the artificial orange. In a perfect world there'd be no aftertaste.

Older and Wiser

Naivete and youth deceived my brain into depositing Nutella into the same little neuro-bin in which I categorize other foreign spreads that I never wish to consume, particularly Vegomite. Imagine my surprise to encounter a jar of the stuff in the pantry this week, not just to encounter it but to open it and to discover that it was, in fact, filled with delicious Italian nutty chocolate in convenient lickable form. Since I now admit to have officially dipped my index finger into the jar, I can clearly not leave it, contaminated, in the pantry, and have no recourse but to eat it all.

the Kisumu museum

So I made it back down to Kisumu with my cell phone as the only casuality. It was an awful trip and I plan on not repeating it. Back alone in my little house on the outskirts of this sprawling city, I found myself staring down the barrel of another empty weekend. To fill the void, I attempted to accomplish three goals. First, I went for a little run away from the city to a peninsula called Hippo Point. Lonely Planet remarks on its nice view of Lake Victoria, the eponymous hippo potential, and the nice little restaurant there that's popular with the expat community.

The view was clouded by morning mists, the hippos were grazing elsewhere, and the restaurant had burned down. Nevertheless, it was a pretty spot, and if I had the ability to disconnect that place from last year's shooting of the son of the researcher in whose house I'm staying, I might have lingered. The son is fine and does not appear emotionally scarred, but if the hippos weren't going to make an immediate and dramatic appearance, I was going home.

Second, I bought a new telephone. For those interested, the number is 0725 926 339, preceeded by the appropriate international and Kenyan codes. I'm not sure if the number will work, since immediately upon turning it on, I received a number of text messages clearly not intended for me (including one that reads "Baby gal am so grateful 4 wat u ave done 4 me ope day i get 2 repay u bt as always u wil always b in ma prayers gnit").

Third, I went to the Kisumu museum. The original museum building is a small room housing dusty exhibits of the sort common to dull museums worldwide. These included a number of stuffed birds and monkeys wired into unlifelike poses, a tableau depicting early tribal life, and a collection of ancient bowls and tools used for the storage and preparation of various grains. When I later left the museum, I wandered through the nearby marketplace, where wizened old women could be found selling clay and wooden bowls that were, as near as I could tell, identical in every way to the museum artifacts, with the distinction of being a thousand years younger.

More interesting were the various exhibits scattered around outside the museum proper. One was an avowedly accurate replication of a traditional Luo homestead. It featured a number of thatched mud huts in which a Luo man would live with his assorted wives and sons. Again, the exhibit was made somewhat less dramatic by the fact that the actual Luos living in the slums a few blocks away still live in very similar huts, albeit with less wives. However, I found the earnestness with which the exhibit was constructed to be touching. The inside of the huts were decorated with a few clay pots and other traditional artifacts, but were generally uninteresting; in one hut, however, I found one of the museum workers stuffing newly harvested bunches of bananas into the narrow neck of one of the pots. I can't imagine any of the handful of visitors to the very dark interior of the hut wondering whether there were any bananas still lodged inside the pots sitting in the corner, but I'm pleased to be able to report that the answer is yes. Other unexpected touches included the live sheep sitting in a huddled mass inside the traditional animal enclosure. I hope that they are taken out for grazing purposes at least on occasion.

Clearly not taken out for any purposes whatsoever were the other animal exhibits. These included a snake pit, a snake house, and a crocodile pool. Gracing the crocodile pool was a sign titled, "Danger Crocodile" that admitted that despite the fact that crocodiles were "useful and valuable," the museum strongly discouraged use of the stagnant pools in which they were kept for purposes of playing, washing, or bathing. The museum hoped that such measures would help curtail the incidence of death, and advised me to warn my children as such. The crocodiles looked like they were unlikely to cause many deaths, since they lay unmoving in their pools even as the other museum-goers prodded them with branches.

The snake house featured species from around Kenya. All were marked as "very poisonous" except for the enormous rock python and a certain mamba, the later of which was instead labeled as having an "extremely virulent neurotoxin." In related news, I nearly stepped on a large viper of unknown species in the highland forest last week. I did manage to take a picture, so hopefully we can ascertain its degree of deadliness at a later time.

Vulnerability

Clearly, Sphere, you're correct that fear makes one unusually observant. I think it's all part of the stress response. I'm guessing the hypothalamus is to blame, but that's really your department. All I know is that slow-burning fear causes a steady hormone drip drip drip into dilated blood vessels, making your heart beat faster and your brain seize upon little details that it would have let slip by otherwise. Details like the deactivated speedometer in the cracked dashboard of the matatu that's hurtling you down the Nandi escarpment, or the quiet chuckles in the back that precede the information that you are to be wildly overcharged for the pleasure of that hurtle. These observations are usually welcome rewards the next day, when you sit in your kitchen, sipping tea, and ruing the loss of your borrowed cell phone. At the time, however, they are the unnecessarily taxing by-products of a daylong adrenaline buzz, leaving you a strung-out, nervous wreck by the end of the day.

Day - twa

We enter the Detroit streets. If you saw only this, you'd think us grand. The Renaissance Center towers above. It's bright and black. The river is less than a dreaming distance away. The evening sun shines dimly. On the corner of Randolph and Monroe we pass a place called "Chicken Bunchies Biscuits." Detroit. Wooo! I see the unlit lights of Comerica Park. The new Hard Rock Cafe comes up on the right and we start to come up on the festival. There are some white tents and people walking around. We're going to try to find some secure parking, so as not to get jacked. But there's also this sense -- Benny P in Kenya do you agree? -- when you go into a place that renders you a little bit more vulnerable than usual that you're not complacent and that you may see things you don't normally see. It's a question of travel. Plato was happy to sit quietly in his room. cf Bishop, "The choice is never wide and never free."

Beginner's Luck

All this also reminds of a trip I made into the city as a 16 or 17 year old with the expressed purpose of playing at a jazz club jam session. I think the place was called Bomack's. I was dating a girl named Molly Stout -- who was, oddly, a little stout -- and I asked her if she would come with me because I was a little afraid. When we got there, I was afraid to get my sax out of the trunk. We entered the club. We were the only non-blacks in the place, and there was a pretty full-fledged jam session going on. The stage was lit brightly in yellow and at the mike was a good tenor sax player of middle age, wailing away on a spirited blues / r and b tune. There was more than a handful of musicians standing around him, getting their axes out of their cases, sitting at tables with their glowing instruments in their laps and sipping on a cocktail perhaps to deaden the nerves, or ward off withdrawal. I wished for a spirit then. Molly and I sat down and looked at each other. She has a beautiful face, round like an apple, plump lips, diminutive nose shaped like a ski-jump, and well-tended-to, sandy brown hair that rises from the front of her head in a wave and falls quickly around her chin. She's got a warm, knowing smile. When I remember her now, I remember her face in that club, the dim light softening her features. Soon enough a big guy set down napkins on our table and brusquely asked for our IDs. "Over 21," he said, and we had to go. On my way out I passed a large table of teenagers digging the music. And that was my first, and I think last, attempt at playing jazz in Detroit. On the way home I think I touched Molly's hand and thanked her for accompanying me on such a silly brainchild. Still I thank her.

Steeple and Skyscraper

Driving into Detroit is redolent of my romantic youth when I was in love with cities and wanted to run away to New York or wherever. As you come down I-75 and get into the city for a few seconds in front of you there is a church steeple in front of the Renaissance Center -- the city's tallest building -- and they are perfectly aligned. The steeple is green as if it is copper and the skyscraper is a gleaming black cylinder. As a high school student on a night out, feeling gritty and a little bit on the edge, I had this sense as I saw them shadow each other that everything would work out swimmingly. I always had that feeling. It was a moment of --- what do you call it --- confluence? Synchronicity? Of course things always changed, the structures again fell dolefully out of sync. But for a minute there I was benevolent and brave.

On the Way to Detroit You Pass a lot of Trees

And empty space, and grass. I see a flock of birds, patchy, flying over the cars. Kim is brushing her hair. It's a beautiful late summer evening, highway in shadow, highway now in sun. The working title of this journey is "Jizz." The word jazz, in fact, is rumored to originate from this word for semen or sperm, or cum, load, sausage-grease, spew, other stuff. My reasoning is that I would like to go forward with as much force. Not backwards into jazz history, or backwards into a decaying city, but forward into Detroit, into today's music.

7:05 pm, September 2nd. 2005.

Going to the jazz festival in downtown Detroit. Sunny evening. Minimal cloud-cover, patchy cumulus. Sun beginning to set in West. Unattractive girl crossing street on evening jog. Kim is changing her bra and exposing part of her breast. This is the opening --- another jogger --- of a 3.5 day immersion into the life of Detroit and the jazz festival around the time of the early Fall and the recent arrival of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. We'll get a cup of coffee before we go. Ann Arbor is sunny and beautiful, pristine, heavily Caucasian, and heavily Asian on this North Campus. Houses are pretty. Tennis courts, slow drivers. Just passed some Muslims with long Bharkas. Feeling good, young, and happy.

Dissertations should be esoteric, right?

I have found two pieces of software that would allegedly be able to perform the land-cover classifications I hoped to do in the next couple days. One is user-friendly, blazingly powerful, and costs 3,600 pounds. Unless something alarming has happened to the economy of the UK, I believe that may be a lot of money. In a stunning triumph of academic freedom over corrupt capitalist society, the other program is open-source and free. As one might expect from such a piece of software, it is written in a manner that does not employ the mouse. As an added bonus, the instructions are only available in Portuguese.

in the Nandi Hills

The adjustment period to the astonishing rurality of Kipsamoite was rough but short, unlike the viciously bumpy truck ride up the Nandi escarpment. Once out of Kisumu, the countryside quickly turned verdantly tropical, and I was glued to the window as we edged out of the plains and up into the cascading highlands. Jenga nearly ran over a small monkey.

The research team deposited me unceremoniously outside the town's health clinic, near which I would stay in a small house. Unlike the other houses in the area, my house has very nice plumbing, complete with sink, shower, and toilet. Unfortunately, none of these items actually work. In the days to come they will lurk inside the house, taunting me, as I wash myself by splashing chilly water over my head from a red plastic bucket.

Chandy, the doctor in charge of the project, sat shotgun in the beleagured KEMRI vehicle. As I retrieved my backpack, he said, "I think you'll be very happy here." He said it looking through the front windshield, without making eye contact.

The transition from the relative luxury of Kisumu to a small farming village lacking running water or electricity was eased by the kind hospitality of my neighbors. Peter, 31, is the head field assistant on the project and small shopkeeper. Like everyone else in Kipsamoite, he grows maize and vegetables. He also keeps goats. He leads me on lengthy excursions around town, pointing out traditional crops and points of interest as we walk. We cover remarkable swathes of land, hiking miles each day over the hilly terrain. I learn about the process through which millet is grown; the proper technique for holding a knife while harvesting, as well as how it can be seasoned in a sack for several days to give it a darker color and richer taste. Maize is ubiquitous, and no family goes without. Tea is the prime cash crop, planted in neat rows of shiny green shrubs. To harvest, only the top two leaves and the bud are cut, since addition of the older, less delicious leaves would decrease the crop's value.

My next-door neighbor, a doctor named John, brings me a plastic thermos of hot chai each morning, for which I will be eternally grateful. Sometimes in the evenings, just before the heavy rains begin, he makes a millet porridge for me. The Lonely Planet guidebook, somewhat more accurately, calls this concoction "gruel". Some days I find it difficult to stomach the lumpy gray-brown substance, but on the colder evenings I find it delicious.

standardized testing is futile

On the drive in to the KEMRI facilities this morning, the woman sitting next to me was holding a copy of last year's School-Based Evaluation Test, which I believe is a national exam given to primary school students here. Last year's exams are supplied to those interested to help prepare children for the ones that are upcoming. Admittedly, I don't know how old the students who take this test are, but one can only hope that the Leave No Child Behind legislation will produce such rigorous tests.

I could only note a few questions without becoming ill from reading during the fabulously rough ride, but they included the following. The actual multiple-choice answers are provided. I do not have answers.

1) Bleeding gums are (brown, sick).

2) Wheels can make work (easy, hard).

3) The eye has (two, three) colors.

4) One can use clay soil in (modeling, planting).

5) The book of God is: (the Bible, Primary English, Mfufi).

I don't know what Mfufi is either, but for some reason I imagine it involves the adventures of a mischievous rabbit.

welcome to the western highlands

I've been hanging out on the front stoop of my little concrete house in Kipsamoite, watching the livestock brave the absurdly pouring rains. Rains mixed with knuckle-sized hailstones which, perhaps due the (literally) religiously enforced alcohol ban, I can't help think would look really nice with a martini poured liberally overtop.

Usually accompanying me as I wait for the rains to cease are a variety of pint-sized street urchins. Think of "urchin" in the most Dickensian mold you can imagine. No shoes, filthy, ripped clothing, wide-eyes. When I write this there are six of them. I made the grave mistake of talking to one of the little urchins my first day here, and he, encouraged, returned faithfully each day with ever increasing numbers of comrades.

The little street-kids are ostensibly here to mind their cows. The cows graze dejectedly in the pasture in front of my house, the hailstones pinging off their soggy hides. Some have abandoned even the pretense of grazing during the downpour and instead stand forlornly, their heads drooped. I feel sorry for them.

The urchins like to stroke my hair. They have none, as if every one of them suffered from leukemia. They have no arm hair either and so they like to touch mine. Only the boy I met originally speaks any English. He uses this skill to ask, periodically, for money.

My second grave error was to allow the English-speaking scamp and his toddling little brother (who I am told thinks that I, as a white man, may eat him at any time) to enter my concrete home on the second day they visited me. They rummaged through everything I owned, touching, pressing, manipulating, and generally making me anxious and irritable. They particularly liked my flashlight. I am not clear what the attraction was, since many people in the highlands own flashlights and mine was not a particularly paramount example, but nevertheless they fought over which one of them could aggressively turn it on and off or drop it the hardest.

Now that the numbers of urchins are increasing like bacteria, I am determined not to let any of them into my moderately clean home. If I leave them alone on the stoop, however, I will eventually hear the door slowly creak open and see a mud-daubed, curious face peer around the corner, perhaps to see if I am currently turning my flashlight on and off. So I stand out on the stoop, writing, and watching the rain pour, accompanied by the little rascals.

addendum

On the drive home, Jenga still had the radio on. Instead of the man sleeping, it now featured him counting down from an indeterminate number that was greater than 36, 655. He counted in a regular, measured voice and had reached somewhere in the mid 36,300's when I made it home. I'm sure the whole broadcast was intended as some form of protest, but I fervently believe that protests are best when they give some indication of what, exactly, is being protested. Jenga had no idea, but he listened anyway. I'm not sure whether the counting or his listening to the counting was the more impressive.

Bands I Have Been In or Been: a retrospective while I download satellite imagery on a slow connection

1997: S'
1998: Wake
1998: Lurk
1999-2000: Rocinante
2001: Lamar
2002: Fuera de Contra
2002: The Electric Elvis Cocktail/The Busters
2003: The Short Bus Kids
2004: Benny Profane
2005: S'

the commute

The official KEMRI truck picks me up each morning and drives me, furiously, to the Institute. I believe the driver's name is Jenga. The ride apparently used to be twice as long and to involve considerably more wading in mud. Now the roads are mostly paved. We make one stop at the entomology labs affiliated with Walter Reed. They're on a busy corner of Kisumu entirely covered in shoe venders. Shoes are carefully arranged along and across the sidewalks, and the merchants polish them endlessly. One recent innovation in sidewalk shoe sales is the vertical display, a wooden rack that lets passing traffic inspect the wares. Vertical wooden shoe racks have sprung up around the city, clear indications of Kisumu's continued economic resurgence.

Jenga was listening to a popular morning radio program on today's drive, featuring a lone talk radio personality. The personality had been asleep, on air, for three hours when I tuned in. His snores varied in magnitude, but his breathing was consistent. Jenga insisted we listen to the snoring throughout our commute.

Traveling can be spelled with one or two l's

I'm writing from my newfound workstation at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI, if you will), a walled compound housing a diverse group of Kenyan, American, and non-denominational researchers. The CDC's facilities are here, in an amazingly modern building that is somewhat posher than those in Atlanta. I am enthusiastically prevented from entering it unless I have an appointment.

The flights that deposited me here were very long and very dull, though otherwise unremarkable. The massive Boeing 747 which successfuly landed in Naiobi has an upper deck, while the 777, despite a wingspan of 60.9 meters, does not. The 777 which carried me over the Atlantic does, however, have brilliantly comfortable lounge seating with luxurious, fully reclinable seats. It also has a cramped economy section, where I sat. Curiously, the 777 is, according to Boeing, also the first plane to have a rose named after it. "The rose is deep purple-red with a citrus-like fragrance," and "was developed by Olympia, Wash., Western Independent Nurseries."

I found the propeller plane that carried me from Nairobi to Kisumu at an irrationally early hour to lack both comfortable seating and an ability to inspire me to breed rose hybrids. When it came time to board, we were waved through the gate onto the tarmac and pointed in roughly the general direction of the plane. My fellow passengers and I wandered around the parked aircraft as if trying to find a forgotten car in the long-term economy lot. After an aborted attempt to board a flight to Mombasa, we succesfully found the turbo-prop and were rewarded with locally roasted peanuts.